PCR-based zebrafish model for personalised medicine in head and neck cancer

PCR-based zebrafish model for personalised medicine in head and neck cancer

Description

Abstract Background Currently, in vivo model for personalised cancer drug testing is challenging. A zebrafish larvae xenograft model has been applied in recent years to cancer research, particularly for drug testing purposes, showing promising results in drug testing against patient-derived tumour xenografts. Currently, these xenograft models apply imaging techniques to measure drug efficacy. However, this method carries several limitations, including timely imaging, thereby reducing the available number of tested fish and drugs. Here, we propose a PCR-based fast assay to evaluate drug efficacy in a zebrafish larvae xenograft model. Methods We tested two primary and corresponding metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) cell lines and patient-derived tongue cancer sample applying zebrafish larvae xenograft model. Cisplatin efficacy was tested using imaging technique and compared the results with PCR-based methods. Drug screening of eight compounds was applied on both cell lines and patient sample using PCR. Results In a head-to-head comparison, all the three techniques (imaging, quantitative PCR, and droplet digital PCR) showed similar reduction of the cancer cells growth after cisplatin treatment. Using the quantitative PCR assay, we demonstrated a dose-dependent response of HNSCC cells to cisplatin. Drug screening results of four HNSCC cell lines and patient sample revealed different drug efficacy between tested cancer cells. Conclusion We introduce a novel, easy, fast and cost-effective PCR-based in vivo zebrafish larvae assay to test the response of cell lines and clinical tumour samples to anti-cancer drugs. This method goes hand-by-hand with the commonly used imaging assay.
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Year of publication

2019

Authors

Mataleena Parikka - Contributor

Unknown organization

Ahmed Al-Samadi - Creator

Katja Tuomainen - Creator

Reidar Grenman - Creator

Tommy Wilkman - Creator

Tuula Salo - Creator

Abdelhakim Salem - Contributor

Aini Hyytiäinen - Contributor

Anne Kivimäki - Contributor

Antti Mäkitie - Contributor

Karri Mesimäki - Contributor

Sakhr Al-Kubati - Contributor

figshare - Publisher

Other information

Fields of science

Cancers; Otorhinolaryngology, ophthalmology

Language

English

Open access

Open

License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Keywords

Cancers, Otorhinolaryngology ophthalmology